SEQUESTRATION COULD DEVASTATE CANCER RESEARCH

Like many in San Diego, Christine Gould has been personally affected by cancer. She lost her mother to a rare salivary gland cancer three years ago, when she was a graduate student at the University of California San Diego. But Christine is not just a daughter of a cancer victim, she’s also a cancer scientist: a postdoctoral researcher at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, home to one of San Diego’s three National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Centers. There, she studies a particular protein that promotes tumor growth and metastasis.

Cancer research is personally important to Christine. It’s also important to the millions of Americans who suffer from or who have lost someone to one of the 200 different diseases we call cancer. But now Christine’s work, the work of hundreds of cancer researchers in San Diego and thousands of scientists across the country is in jeopardy. If Congress does nothing to stop it, the across-the-board federal budget cuts known as sequestration will slice deeply and devastatingly into the already declining budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The NIH – the NCI’s parent agency – funds the vast majority of biomedical research in San Diego and elsewhere. Each year, more than $850 million in NIH grants are awarded to San Diego researchers. If the NIH budget is reduced by a projected 6.4 percent, San Diego alone would lose an amount equivalent to the annual salaries of 1,465 graduate students and postdoctoral trainees like Christine. These are the researchers who conduct the bulk of the hands-on work in cancer research and other biomedical laboratories.

Sequestration of the NIH budget means that many good ideas – perhaps tomorrow’s cancer cures – will be abandoned as young scientists are forced to leave jobs and research careers. Whole laboratories will shut down.

Now is not the time to give up on cancer research. Thanks in large part to NIH-funded research in U.S. universities, hospitals and independent research institutes, Americans are living nearly 30 years longer than they did in 1900. Cancer death rates in this country are falling by approximately 1 percent each year. In particular, we’ve made astonishing progress in treating childhood cancers. Ninety percent of children with acute lymphocytic leukemia now survive for five years or more after diagnosis – an advance that was unthinkable when the National Cancer Act was signed in 1971.

Beyond saving lives, NIH and other federal grants also helped give birth and sustenance to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries based in San Diego and throughout California. According to BIOCOM, a local life science association, more than 105,000 Southern Californians are employed in the life sciences.

We want San Diego to remain a hotbed of innovation in the life sciences, particularly in cancer research. But other countries are already beating us at our own game. For example, a single institute in China already has a greater capacity for gene sequencing than the entire U.S. capabilities combined. That’s in part because of China’s investment in science: Between 1999 and 2009, Asia’s share of worldwide R&D expenditures grew from 24 to 32 percent, while the United States’ decreased from 38 to 31 percent. If current trends continue, China’s investment in biomedical research is likely to be twice ours within five years.

We need greater American investment in biomedical research. We are in the midst of a transformative decade in cancer research. Federal investment in the Human Genome Project gave us the tools we’re now just beginning to use to personalize medicine – matching patients with the therapies that work best for each individual. This approach makes cancer treatments more effective and less harmful. To turn away from science now would be to waste that investment in the Human Genome Project and in the thousands of other research programs that have propelled us where we are today.

Local members of Congress take note: We are relying on you to prevent sequestration and renew support for the NIH and NCI. It will make our community – and our loved ones – healthier in the long run.